Okay, so that sounds like a long way of agreeing with me that your view of the world is much different than mine. Glad to see you're comfortable with your own beliefs; I'm comfortable with mine, thank you very much.
My point, related to the topic of this discussion, is that MY view of magic, it's purpose, and effects, is very different than yours, and of others.
Hmmm... good point. I apologize for my previous attitude.
Again, this is a heart of a great mystery. Which you are avoiding, but that's cool. Please avoid Satanic Evangelism in the Neopagan DIR, its unseemly.
I wasn't trying to convert anyone, as this is a topic about our views on magic, a lot of people are going to disagree. Take any other Satanist (or most of anyone) out of the LHP DIR and there is a 99.9% chance they will fundamentally disagree with me on magic.
Do you think that these spirits can express their will in measurable ways? For instance, if we were under lab conditions wuth a smoke plume flowing through a column of air, would you be able to influence the will of the air so that smoke behaves differently as it flows through that air in an observable way?
I would assume it would be in a measurable way, otherwise you couldn't physically see the results. I've thought of doing Divination via smoke before, but I see it as purely a way to "jump-start" the pattern seeking parts of my brain to make some self-discovery by going into over-drive in making intuitive jumps until something clicks. Think of a guy that is convinced something is buried in his yard... by sheer chance alone there probably is, but it's most likely not what he expected. Then after I get that self-discovery I run it against my analytical processes (kind of like a filtration system for sorting out real revelations from bull) and compare it to what I already know of myself to see if it really holds up.
Can? Sure. Question is, why WOULD they?
Can't answer this for anyone else, but I've never been particularly interested in parlor tricks.
Furthermore, I have a different philosophy on magic, it seems. Must catch up on the conversation before elaborating.
It has occurred to me right now 2 things:
1) It is more than "parlor tricks", it is proving to the world that we are not a joke... that this is real.
2) If it was proven it was real scientifically, said spirits would constantly get harassed by easily millions upon millions of people... imagine how annoying that would be! Perhaps Loki, Apollo, Shiva, ect ect want the status quo of a more manageable number of followers to attend to. I mean look at how many people Jesus needs to work with... that is a lot of strain for one god/spirit...
Kind of reminds me how in Star Wars the Sith Lords were more powerful when all of the Darkside was only being channeled through one or two... which is why when Luke Skywalker had all the Lightside going through him he could defeat the bad guys as it was halved through each of them... or so a retcon tells us. Perhaps the gods want to channel all their energies into a handful of dedicated followers, and this is only possible when not everyone is trying to get their help constantly?